[flip to below fold]
This is who we are and how we live, so let's just admit it so the gun grab agenda can continue:
"Back-to-back bursts of gun violence in El Paso and Dayton stun country" by Campbell Robertson and Julie Bosman New York Times, August 4, 2019
DAYTON, Ohio — In a country that has become nearly numb to men with guns opening fire in schools, at concerts and in churches, the back-to-back bursts of gun violence in less than 24 hours were enough to leave the public stunned and shaken.
The shootings prompted Republicans, including President Trump, to condemn the gunmen’s actions and offer support to the people of Dayton and El Paso. Democrats urged Congress to take action and pass stricter gun laws. “We have a responsibility to the people we serve to act,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement.
Residents of El Paso were on edge, grimly aware of a manifesto posted online that the authorities said was written by the suspect, Patrick Crusius, 21, who was in police custody. The manifesto spoke of a “Hispanic invasion of Texas,” described an imminent attack by the writer, and railed against immigrants.
Oh, that is why yesterday's lead was rewritten, with the Christchurch reference removed. I guess they were undecided as to which cover story they wanted to present!
Oh, man, does this ever stink of Gladio and the strategy of tension as the gun-grabbing agenda is being advanced. They really one-upped themselves this time.
Federal investigators in El Paso said they were treating the massacre at the Walmart that also wounded another 27 on Saturday morning as an act of domestic terrorism, and prosecutors said they were considering federal hate crime charges. They were also considering federal gun charges that would carry the death penalty.....
So they are going to kill someone because they killed people. How hypocritical.
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The article itself is vague on details of shootings or the backgrounds of the shooters, but is full on in pushing the politics surrounded the issue. That is a tell as to what we are actually dealing with here, and I am suspecting more and more that we are dealing with staged and scripted crisis drills, possibly filmed long ago, that are being presented as real. It's the default position when dealing with a pre$$ that has become so abysmal, what with the advocacy journali$m and flat-out lies.
"Twin tragedies lead to renewed calls for gun control" by Jazmine Ulloa Globe Staff, August 4, 2019
WASHINGTON — “We are at a tipping point in terms of public debate,” said Adam Winkler, a gun-policy expert and law professor at the University of California Los Angeles. “But Republicans still control the Senate, Trump still controls the White House. There is not going to be any significant change as long as those two things continue to exist.”
Good! I can't think of a better reason to vote Republican next year!
“Are there more things that can be done? I’m sure there are, but I will say there’s something deeper going on here,” said Republican Senator Rob Portman of Ohio. “There aren’t enough laws, and in fact no law can correct some of the more fundamental cultural problems we face today as a country, and the shooting last night is an indication of that.”
President Trump echoed those thoughts in comments Sunday afternoon.
“If you look at both of these cases, this is mental illness,” Trump said as he boarded Air Force One in New Jersey Sunday to return to Washington, promising to deliver a more detailed statement on Monday. “These are really people that are very very seriously mentally ill.”
If so, then were they on any prescription pharmaceuticals? If so, I suspect that angle will be played down, as will the gamer angle, in favor of racism and white supremacism. Don't want to hurt the $pecial intere$ts which this nation and its pre$$ serve.
Gun policy experts called the deflection to mental illness and other potential causes, such as drug addiction, rock music, and video games, an old diversionary tactic.
What did I just type?
“All of these things are relevant to discuss and look at, but none of these get to the root cause of what is causing this violence — which is easy access to firepower,” said Robert Spitzer, a political scientist at the State University of New York at Cortland. “You can’t commit a mass shooting if you can’t get guns.”
And you can't commit mass-murdering war crimes without an army, what's his point?
That's the thing. All this discussion and debate takes place in an echo chamber with no context. It's all self-contained cognitive dissonance to advance an agenda. That's it. Just keep firing away at it.
In the 2020 election campaign, young activists have already elevated the issue of gun control, even though it has not historically played well in the South and interior regions of the country, where Republicans and the National Rifle Association have stoked fears that the government could take away people’s guns. Polls show that an overwhelming and bipartisan majority of Americans support expanded background checks. A majority of Americans, mainly Democrats, support a ban on assault weapons.
Look at the lying war-promoter complain about stoking fear as it does the very same thing in reaction to Dayton and El Paso as it foments more wars within its pages.
Thing is, this message has not historically played well in certain regions, and even with the illusion put forth by the pre$$ and ma$$ media, this is going to foo nothing but hurt the cause if we are as divided as the pre$$ claims we are. It gets to the point where they have run us into so many circles that it is they themselves who are now dizzy.
Democratic presidential candidates on Sunday rushed to call for action on gun-control legislation and to condemn Trump’s rhetoric, which they blamed for inflaming the white nationalism that law enforcement officials believe spurred the attack at a Walmart in El Paso now under investigation as a case of domestic terrorism.
Oh, now I see why this staged and scripted event was foisted on the American people at this time. It was already in the can, and the recent race rhetoric made it a perfect time for release.
Related: "A man is charged with making threats against Temple University and its police department as he was buying ammunition in a Walmart....."
What, that one get called off?
Says he wanted to find Cosby the rapist and deliver justice on to him.
Folks, I'm sorry, but this is getting to be like a movie I've seen 1,000 times before. The script is the same, the motives obvious, and there is no surprise ending.
Democratic candidate Beto O’Rourke, who is from El Paso, said Sunday that he agreed with a description of Trump as a white nationalist.
He's also a Jewish supremacist, but that doesn't seem to bother Beto (who also called Netanyahu a racist; that was when his descent in the polls began. Maybe they are trying to resurrect him now).
“It is not just President Trump, but he’s certainly — as the person in the position of greatest public trust in power — most responsible for it,” O’Rourke said. “This is what we’re seeing on the Internet. This is the toleration of intolerance and hatred and racism in this country. This is what we’re seeing here today, and it will continue to happen unless we call it out and unless we change it.”
I guess it was just a matter of seconds before they blamed Trump, and maybe this blog won't be around for much longer, although it is clearly far from racist as it complains about the stacks and stacks of dark-skinned corpses resulting from AmeriKa's Wars for the Jews.
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The general consensus here is a false flag blamed on white supremacist terrorism, with Trump saying more gun control may be needed after he found out the Dayton Shooter was a pro-Satan leftist who supported Warren, Sanders, Antifa and Communism (despite having been dead for five years?), and America is not going to be a free and open society any longer because of these Manchurian White Supremacists. I'm to the point where I'm wondering which ad agency wrote the script.
Related:
Trump tweets and stays out of sight for hours after shootings
Yeah, the coward fired off some tweets before taking cover, gotcha.
Democratic candidates seek to link shootings to Trump
O’Rourke said Trump had “a lot to do with what happened in El Paso yesterday.”
Ayanna Pressley ‘absolutely’ believes Trump is a racist
But says her focus is policy, not rhetoric.
Cummings urges Trump to ‘come to Baltimore’
That way they can get a ‘‘clear shot at him’’ -- unlike over at the White(!) House!
I think it is pretty clear that his presidency is now dead in the water. The sharks have torn him to pieces and devoured him. He's history now, his achilles heel being race.
"Defense lawyers seek leniency, saying Cesar Sayoc, 57, burdened by severe learning disabilities, was living alone in a cramped van and working as a strip club DJ and a pizza deliveryman in West Palm Beach, Fla., when he became ‘‘increasingly obsessive, paranoid and angry’’ and believed President Trump’s enemies were trying to hurt him and other Trump supporters....."
The mask is off the pathetic patsy, but Trump will nevertheless get caught in the undertow and be displaced.
Shooting victims include a mom who died protecting her baby
"America is sick, and it’s getting sicker. Sick with hate, sick with rage. Sick with warped masculinity, sick with Internet-fueled radicalization and social isolation. Sick with racism, sick from social media that has breathed new life into old prejudices, and sick, of course, with guns....."
You know of what I'm sick?
Gun reform alone won’t address white supremacist extremism
Nor will it address the Jewish supremacism of which none may speak and for which the Globe is a mouthpiece -- and why not? That is their core readership. I'm just a stupid hick on the fringe out here shelling out my $3 a day for their slop (did your eyes just pop out of your head? Yeah, they charge $3 for their pos out here).
"In wake of shootings, fears that ‘it is not safe to be Latino’" by John Hilliard and Gal Tziperman Lotan Globe Correspondent and Globe Staff, August 4, 2019
Robert Trestan, the Anti-Defamation League of New England’s executive director, said people are increasingly using weapons and violence to make political statements.
“The combination of language that targets people and dehumanizes them along with readily accessible firearms is dangerous,” Trestan said in a phone interview. “It’s a reminder when groups of people are targeted by words, those words are sometimes a call to action to people who want to commit violence.”
Like Israeli settlers, right?
I'm also thinking of all the war lies blared from the front pages, first the WMD in Iraq and now the way they are covering Iran.
The Rev. Laura Everett, the executive director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches, said: “We are at a critical moment in the life of this country, where the anti-immigrant, anti-black words of our president are giving permission to violence: Words have power, and violent words lead to violence.”
And what will now do with the newspapers that lead us into war with lies bullhorn from the front page? Words that give more than permission, but actually encourage and lead to military action.
Espinoza-Madrigal, with Lawyers for Civil Rights, said that since the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., racists have been emboldened to attack synagogues, black churches, and mosques.
“This is linked by the racist, anti-immigrant, and xenophobic rhetoric coming from the White House,” he said. “It is essentially sending the message that white supremacists can take action without repercussion, and that is reprehensible.”
Unless it's Israel stealing more land or knocking down Palestinian homes. Then there is a bleat and that's it.
Before the Sunday morning Mass at at Most Holy Redeemer, parishioners stood for the US national anthem, followed by the anthem for El Salvador. After the Mass, they celebrated that country’s patron saint, Divino Salvador del Mundo, during a festival.
Jonathan Parra, 34, who was crossing the street from Lombardi Memorial Park in East Boston Sunday afternoon, said he has been paying more attention to politics in anticipation of the 2020 election. Next year’s election will be the first time Parra, who was born in Colombia, will be able to cast a vote since becoming a US citizen, he said. He said he thinks guns should mainly be in the hands of trained police officers. “I’m afraid to go to the movie theater just because someone might stand up and start shooting,” he said.....
That means he buys the bullshit and wishes to remain defenseless against authority -- which is a surprise, what with him being from Colombia and all.
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Related:
TSA screeners find gun in Conn. man’s bag
The link simply says filler, and that about says it all.
Lynn man fatally shot by Everett police during chase into Revere
Woman injured in Salem drive-by shooting
Those shootings are getting far less attention now.
Speaking of attention-getters:
Courtney Kennedy and Paul Hill’s enduring agony
Related: Opioid Overdose
You can thank local journalists for the report, and the funeral is set for Monday morning.
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Now about those wars:
"Iran says it has seized another oil tanker in Persian Gulf" by Vivian Yee and Yonette Joseph New York Times, August 4, 2019
(Oh, God, more New York Times swill)
BEIRUT — Iran seized a foreign oil tanker in the Persian Gulf, state television reported Sunday, the third time Tehran has reported detaining a tanker in the last month as the United States applies its campaign of “maximum pressure,” sanctions and diplomatic isolation against the country.
The tanker was detained by the country’s Revolutionary Guard on Wednesday, along with the seven members of the ship’s foreign crew, according to official Iranian news agencies, which cited a naval commander. Iran did not identify who owned or operated the ship, but said the tanker was “smuggling” fuel to some Arab states, without offering evidence.
The Trump administration has tried to force Iran into submission by choking off its oil sales, the cornerstone of the country’s economy. Iran has responded by lashing out at the West through provocations small and large — including the recent tanker seizures — raising fears that any miscalculation and tit-for-tat responses would escalate into war.
Some people are rather eager that it escalate, and are in no way afraid -- namely, the people and government the New York Times fronts for.
The way that whole paragraph reads is as if the official stories regarding all the events of the last few months are stone-carved truth, and as if the Iranians are behind every provocation.
The Trump administration’s stated goal is to extract a nuclear deal from Iran that is more favorable to US interests than the 2015 agreement that President Trump abandoned last year. Critics say, however, the administration has only undermined any path to diplomacy by making demands that Iran cannot accept.
The Iranians, in turn, have taken steps to renege on their commitments under the 2015 deal and have threatened to violate the agreement further unless European countries that cosigned the deal offer some relief from the sanctions. The Europeans have made clear that they hope to preserve the deal, but they have not been able to give a meaningful boost to Iran’s economy, which is reeling under the weight of the sanctions.
That's odd, because just yesterday the New York Times told me that sanctions were being circumvented, making Trump look weak and feckless. Did a whole study and everything.
So WhichTF is it, NYT?
SIGH!!!!!
That has led to a split between Europe and the United States despite their common interest in making sure crucial oil shipping routes in the Persian Gulf are protected against Iranian and other threats. The Trump administration has sought to rally a maritime force to escort ships through the Gulf, but European nations have distanced themselves from the effort, and Germany has outright said no.....
There is no split. The Europeans have bowed down and won't violate sanctions, and I would expect Germany to be hit by a terror attack relatively soon for not being on board.
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And as spring turns to summer:
"Sudan factions sign agreement paving way for civilian rule" by Nada Rashwan New York Times, August 4, 2019
The agreement between Sudan’s factions comes after a popular uprising that began in December with a demonstration against the soaring price of bread. The protests expanded into a movement that led to the removal of President Omar al-Bashir after 30 years in power.
Bread, cast upon Sudanese waters, leads to a successful coup.
One of the points that had been left undecided was the fate of the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary run by Lieutenant General Mohamed Hamdan, the deputy chief of the military council that took over after Bashir’s ouster. According to the agreement signed Sunday, the forces will be overseen by the Sudanese army.
Another point of contention was the possibility of absolute immunity from prosecution for military generals for past actions, including protest-related violence. The agreement established that immunity could be lifted for a convicted military official based on a vote by a legislative body made up of representatives from the pro-democracy movements, said Mohanad Hamid, a spokesman for the Sudanese Professionals Association, one of the main organizations behind the protest movement.....
It's got all the buzzwords and hallmarks of a CIA color revolution.
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Also see:
Hong Kong protesters hold multiple rallies
It was the second of three straight days of large-scale civil disobedience that are paralyzing city neighborhoods ahead of a planned general strike.
Brazil gang leader dresses up as daughter in jail escape bid
Anything to make the torture stop.
Teenager arrested after boy, 6, is thrown from Tate museum
The boy was led like a sheep to slaughter.
"Tensions have soared along the volatile, highly militarized frontier between India and Pakistan in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, as India has deployed more troops and ordered thousands of visitors out of the region. Indian firing Sunday along the Line of Control that separates Kashmir between the archrivals wounded a woman, and the ongoing skirmishes spread fear in border villages, Pakistani police said. The frontier residents on the Pakistani side are either moving out to safer places or have begun construction of new bunkers, with some strengthening existing shelters near their homes. Pakistan and India, which both claim Kashmir in its entirety, routinely blame each other for initiating border skirmishes, but the latest ones come amid the Indian government’s evacuation order of tourists and Hindu pilgrims and a buildup of troops in its part of the region. The measures have sparked fears in Kashmir that New Delhi is planning to scrap an Indian constitutional provision that forbids Indians from outside the region from buying land in the Muslim-majority territory. In recent days, Hindu-majority India has deployed at least 10,000 troops in Kashmir, with media reports of a further 25,000 ordered to one of the world’s most militarized regions. Thousands of additional Indian soldiers on Sunday began camping in police stations and government buildings in several areas of the region....."
Looks like war, "and Prime Minister Imran Khan of Pakistan condemned the shelling by India and warned on Twitter that the situation has the potential to ‘‘blow up into a regional crisis.’’ He reiterated that ‘‘the only road to peace and security in South Asia runs through a peaceful and just settlement of Kashmir.’’ Later Sunday, Khan and Pakistani political and military leaders on the country’s national security committee met and expressed concerns over what it called ‘‘India’s destabilizing efforts’’ in the region, saying its recent buildup of forces is adding fuel to fire. Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India is scheduled to chair a national security meeting on Monday."
I read that with absolute, total alarm, with way more concern than some shooting events whatever they may be. With each passing day and reading of each Globe, I feel we are that much closer to the cusp of an eruption that will plunge the world into a cataclysmic war.
At least the shootings have relegated Epstein to the B-section:
"Citing ‘nerd tunnel vision,’ biologist George Church apologizes for contacts with Jeffrey Epstein" by Sharon Begley STAT, August 5, 2019
George Church, the prominent Harvard University biologist, offered a full-throated apology for having meetings and phone calls with accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein even after the financier pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting a minor for prostitution.
“I certainly apologize for my poor awareness and judgment,” Church told STAT in his first public comments about Epstein.
Expressing regret that he and other scientists weren’t more cautious in their dealings with Epstein, he said: “There should have been more conversations about, should we be doing this, should we be helping this guy? There was just a lot of nerd tunnel vision.”
Oh, wow. That's how he explains it away.
I have no idea how far STAT is going to dig here, but I doubt he will be burned.
He added, “My main concern is for the people who have been hurt,” the girls and young women Epstein was accused last month of having brought to his Manhattan and Palm Beach, Fla., homes for sex (a charge Epstein denies).
Since the indictment last month, news reports have described numerous meetings Epstein organized, both before and after his 2008 conviction, with physicists, biologists, mathematicians, and other researchers. He seemed to believe his interactions with scientists, especially those at Harvard, would buff his reputation in the financial world.
As for whether Epstein’s 2008 conviction gave Church (a father and grandfather) pause, he said, “I did read a couple of news articles” a decade ago, he said, “but they weren’t clear enough for me to know there was a serious problem.” (The full extent of Epstein’s crimes came out in an investigation by the Miami Herald in 2018; in the New York Times, a 2006 story describing Epstein’s not-guilty plea ran on A19, and one in 2008 characterized the allegations as “involving massages with teenage girls”). “But that is still no excuse for me not being abreast of the news.”
The New York Times sat on it and buried it like they did Weinstein, and now they are given the credit for Weinstein when the New Yorker forced their hand. I know Epstein's crimes are worse, but this pre$$ is untoward as well. I feel like I'm reading pornography of the worst sort every day, the foibles of the rich and famous with enough war gore and political comic relief.
Church said he is used to financiers, technologists, and celebrities seeking him out, and has become a quasi-celebrity himself. In his distinctive Darwinesque beard, he has had star turns on “The Colbert Report,” was named to the Time 100 in 2017, made his genome sequence public, and has been featured on “NOVA” and other television science programs, but Church also has unquestioned scientific gravitas, having helped develop genome sequencing as well as CRISPR genome editing, and founded or advised dozens of biotech companies.
Church better pray he is not listed in a flight log.
Many influential scientists met Epstein through New York literary agent John Brockman, who, starting in 1999, hosted an annual “billionaires dinner” where some of his authors mingled with moguls. Epstein attended several of the dinners from 2000 to 2011, and Brockman described him on his online salon Edge.org as a “science philanthropist.”
It has been suggested out there that Epstein was in fact a front for Israeli intelligence and the Mossad, with his heretofore unmentioned wife having the connections and setting up what now appears to have been a sophisticated blackmail ring of the rich and powerful. That's why the story is being submerged and the pre$$ doesn't follow up. I mean this thing above about the literary agent arranges dinners, c'mon. Brockman, you say?
Church confirmed NBC’s recent report that he had six phone calls and meetings with Epstein in 2014, as shown in Church’s online calendar. Asked what interested Epstein about Church’s work, Church paused before saying, “I don’t think he picked me. So in that sense he may not have been that interested.”
Instead, many of his meetings with Epstein were with Martin Nowak, a Harvard biologist/mathematician who is also a Brockman client and Edge participant, and whose then-fledgling Program for Evolutionary Dynamics Epstein contributed $6.5 million in 2003, five years before his guilty plea. Church and Nowak have worked together on, among other things, the evolution of CRISPR-based gene drives. Church knew nothing about Epstein’s desire in the early 2000s to establish a eugenics program, he said.
Veering off into the world of supremacism to the extreme, and what we were told was the sole providence of long-ago, backward-thinking scientists in the early 20th century and the Nazi regime that came soon after.
I'm floored, folks, with this information.
According to the New York Times, Epstein hoped that multiple women would be inseminated with his sperm. Church has done boundary-pushing research on “recoding life” (to, among other things, make cells resistant to viruses) and argued that making heritable changes in the genomes of embryos should not be off the table, which might have made him a sounding board for eugenic fantasies, but “I never heard anything about it,” Church said. “I’d have thought that I would have been involved in that kind of conversation, but it didn’t tend to go in that direction. But also, I think people tend to behave themselves around me.”
Well, there is your mad scientist and I imagine the pro-life people will be alarmed at this.
You know, this whole biotech, in the lab, manipulating DNA and all, is spawning just as many if not more mutations and failures than successes, but bringing that up isn't good for the $ector. Most of the research is being done so riches can access the stuff. It's about saving their own skins first.
A longtime associate of Church’s seemed surprised that he became involved with Epstein, since Church has prioritized ethics. (The associate declined to be named in a story about Epstein.)
Did he believe Epstein had “paid his debt to society” in 2008 and deserved another chance? “As far as I know people just didn’t have that conversation,” Church said. “But it should have.’’
Scientists’ feeling that they cannot be morally tainted by their associations, however, “may not be rational, or helpful, or correct,” Church allowed. Still, he added, “I would like to think that people’s reputation is multidimensional and multiyear — that it takes a long time to build up but also to tear down.” He was speaking both generally and about himself.....
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I guess it is back to the drawing board:
"Police are continuing an investigation that has led to sexual-assault charges against two former staff members at a magnet school. Corriche Gaskin, 35, a behavioral specialist at Bennie Dover Jackson Middle School in New London, Conn., is accused of sexually assaulting two students and videotaping sexual encounters, including with a teacher, and showing them to students. The incidents allegedly occurred from March 2016 to June 2017. Jevon Elmore, a paraprofessional, is charged with sexual assault at the high school. Melissa Rodriguez, a former middle school teacher, is charged with failing to report an incident. She has pleaded not guilty. Messages seeking comment from the others’ attorneys were not returned. Former principal Alison Burdick is suing; she was put on leave for providing information to police the school district claims compromised student confidentially."
It's a cover-your-ass policy when it comes to wolves in the fold, but at least they will get the full ride.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
"Home buyers and sellers just shrug as mortgage-interest deduction nearly vanishes" by Jim Tankersley and Ben Casselman New York Times, August 4, 2019
PLAINFIELD, Ill. — The mortgage-interest deduction, a beloved tax break bound tightly to the American dream of homeownership, once seemed politically invincible. Then it nearly vanished in middle-class neighborhoods across the country, and it appears that hardly anyone noticed.
In places like Plainfield, a southwestern outpost in the area known locally as Chicagoland, the housing market is humming. The people selling and buying homes do not seem to care much that President Trump’s signature tax overhaul effectively, although indirectly, vaporized a longtime source of government support for homeowners and housing prices.
You can take those two paragraphs so many ways. One would be that after the mortgage-backed securities and fraudulent foreclosure scandals that there simply were not that many people that could take advantage of the break. You don't miss something you never had.
Another is the vanishing and vaporized middle class as the wealth inequality gap in this nation yawns wider with each passing second. That's why nobody noticed, nobody cared.
As a result, far fewer families — and, in particular, far fewer middle-class families — are claiming the itemized deduction for mortgage interest. The benefit, as it remains, is largely for high earners. There has been no audible public outcry, prompting some people in Washington to propose scrapping the tax break entirely.
Why not scrap it?
If the deduction’s decline should be causing a stir anywhere, it is in towns like Plainfield, where the typical family earns about $100,000 a year and the typical home sells for $300,000, but housing professionals, homebuyers and sellers — and detailed statistics about the housing market — show no signs that the drop in the use of the tax break is weighing on prices or activity.
“From the perspective of selling and trying to buy, I don’t see any evidence of that,” said Paul Forsythe, who teaches physical education and coaches football at a high school.....
Then what was the point of this article again?
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Going to cost you more to decorate that new home:
"Consumers would feel bite from latest tariff plan" by Alan Rappeport, Jeanna Smialek and Nelson D. Schwartz New York Times, August 4, 2019
NEW YORK — President Trump announced another wave of China tariffs last week, essentially saying he would impose a tax on nearly all $540 billion in Chinese goods that come into the United States in a year, and this batch could really bite.
It's the canary in the coal mine as his economy starts to sink.
The administration carefully tailored previous rounds of tariffs to pinch businesses in ways that most Americans might not notice, but the 10 percent levy on $300 billion of imports that Trump announced Thursday, which would take effect Sept. 1, is expected to hit consumers where it hurts. From Apple’s iPhones to school supplies, a broad swath of everyday products are about to get more expensive.
Is it going to raise the price on protective groin cups because that's where it would hurt.
The latest move is likely to prompt companies to submit exclusion requests to be spared from the tariffs, cause the Federal Reserve to rethink its plans for interest rates, and inspire fresh retaliation from China that could compound Americans’ economic pain.
All right, so it's more tough talk followed by backpedaling and waiver action.
Here’s what to expect:
I think it is great when the New York Times tells me what to expect.
With some consumer products, the supply comes almost entirely from China, said David French, senior vice president of government relations at the National Retail Federation. He cited umbrellas, electric blankets, and toys.
“Trump is feeling very muscular right now,” French said. “But the next round of tariffs will hit the president’s base particularly hard. The people who voted for him in 2016 felt economically vulnerable. The tariffs will cause job losses and higher prices for everybody but especially his base.”
The most prominent company bracing for the tariffs is Apple, which typically unveils new products every September.
In a letter in June, Apple urged Robert Lighthizer, Trump’s top trade adviser, not to proceed with any new tariffs. The company warned that such tariffs would hamper its global competitiveness and reduce its contribution to the US economy. Apple also said that new tariffs would tilt the playing field in favor of its global rivals.
Trump has shown little sympathy for Apple. Last month, after the company filed 15 tariff-exclusion requests, he said they would be denied and the company should make its products in the United States.
Oh, gawd, he is such an awful dictator (almost as bad as Xi).
Should the proposed tariffs take effect on Sept. 1, they’ll hit Apple’s phones, watches, MacBooks, iMacs, iPads, AppleTV, keyboards, and batteries.
Throughout the trade conflict, Beijing has demonstrated a willingness to respond to the Trump administration’s tariffs as proportionately as possible.
On Friday, China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, said that “adding tariffs is definitely not the correct way to resolve economic and trade frictions.”
US officials were waiting to see how China planned to retaliate.
Won't have to wait long.
The trade imbalance between the two countries leaves China with limited options for imposing additional tariffs on imports from the United States. Beijing could introduce different kinds of barriers, including surprise inspections, license rejections for US companies, or a broadening of China’s “unreliable entities” list.
I suppose they could dump all their U.S. Treasury holdings and demand payment. Then the U.S. government is f***ed, and war ensues.
Analysts have also suggested that China could consider curbing exports of so-called rare-earth minerals to the United States, reinstate a tariff on US cars, or continue to shun soybeans from American farmers.
Throughout the yearlong dispute, China and the United States have continued to talk through their disagreements. China’s next move may be to give the silent treatment a try.
That could work!
The Federal Reserve was already laser-focused on the trade war before Trump’s latest tariff announcement. Officials lowered interest rates last week for the first time in more than a decade, partly because of the uncertainty stoked by the tariffs and the risk that they pose to the economic outlook.
I was told that was a mistake.
Fed officials do not believe that the tariffs already in place have by themselves hurt growth significantly, but policy makers worry that the extended fight is causing businesses to hold back on investment, which could ultimately hurt the broader economy.
Trump’s choice to escalate the fight with China puts Jerome Powell, the Fed chair, and his colleagues in a difficult position. Their job is to keep the economy operating on an even keel, but by lowering rates, which can help keep growth steady and buttress the stock market, the Fed may inadvertently give Trump the cover that he needs to pursue his trade spats.....
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Time to bury the dead and put this blog to bed.
